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The National Health Insurance Authority [NHIA] has announced a free prostate cancer treatment under the National Health Insurance Scheme [NHIS] beginning 2023.
The new policy, according to Dr Okoe Boye, will help the National Health Insurance Authority to cure the disease among patients.
The Chief Executive of the NHIA, Dr. Bernard Okoe-Boye said this at the Jubilee House when the Board and Management called on the President for him to give his consent and to sign the new policy to make it valid.
This action would come into operation when effective research analysis on the scheme proves workable and efficient.
Dr. Okoe-Boye said in January 2017, childhood cancers where not registered on the Insurance scheme but as of now, the NHIA have included 80 percent of all childhood cancers in the National Health Insurance Scheme.
He pointed out that some essential drugs such as Herceptin and Hydroxyurea to treat breast cancer and sickle cell patients are all inclusive on the scheme.
However, Dr. Okoe-Boye claimed that in 2017, there was over one-year arrears payments approximately over GH¢1billion but stated there has been an eight-month reduction in the arrears, this means that when the three months processing and vetting time were deducted, it would be left with about four or five months.
He said five months was a healthy one unlike those past years but was certain with the way the scheme was working, it could clear all the areas within the shortest possible time.
The NHIA Chief Executive informed Nana Addo that, from 2023 the Insurance scheme would undertake biometric verification at the various facilities so that when holders of the card access facilities under the NHIS.
According to him, the rollout of the biometric verification will cut out the phenomenon of fraudulent claims that the Authority has had to deal with.
“Next year we are going to have biometric verification. For these 19 years that we have been running the insurance, all the claims we pay, we pay in the dark in quotes, because hospitals give us documents that these people came to see us, we have no real time evidence that they were actually there, and we have had cases that have been prosecuted in court where claims were fraudulently generated.
“Starting next year, we are going to, again, with the National Identification Authority (NIA) system, every Ghanaian, (it will be faced), when you go to the hospital, you will be biometrically verified before you are seen so that before the month ends, I know that Komfo Anokye saw to 5,000 patients. They [hospitals] can’t send me [NHIA] bills of 6000 people. That alone will cut out the fraud in the system,” Dr. Okoe-Boye stressed.
